There’s something about Blackbirds

There’s something about Blackbirds isn’t there, but I can’t quite fathom what it is that makes them so enigmatic. It could be their colouring – a mysterious and glossy, jet-black oil slick – with sharply contrasting orange beaks and eye-rings? Maybe it’s their assured hopping across our garden lawns, head-cocked, probing for tasty morsels? Or is it their mellifluous song, redolent of spring and ushering in change with fluted, familiar notes?

Maybe it’s their chiming and chinking evensong, that ever-present sonic backdrop of half-lit March evenings. That ‘pink’ and ‘clink’ is a constant. A sound that we know and love but often allow to float past our ears and mind, with little thought. Blackbirds, are they too familiar? Are we too used to seeing them? They’re so characterful and uniquely individual – mainstays in our garden bird communities. Bold, black and beautiful.

I’m drawn to a short passage in my book.

“I’d like to share a recent experience. It was yet another time of transition at work, fuelling my stresses and anxieties to a frenetic level. My job was altering and my teaching subject was to become mathematics. It was exciting to become a ‘proper’ teacher but my subjects usually being life skills and humanities, I felt weighted by the topic. This had led me to become extremely obsessive about my lesson planning and I was working at home far too much. On my way home one day, I decided, rather spontaneously, to counteract my negative thought processes with a stroll around the patch, as the evening rolled in.

It had been a fairly standard walk, with most of the resident species on show around the usual circuit. Near the car park, at the end of the walk, seemed the perfect place to stop. An outpost, looking down from the footpath on to a procession of poplar trees, bony and brush-like in the February chill. The sky was becoming increasingly dark, dissolving the last light of the day into an inky purple wash. A hubbub began to rise nearby. Blackbirds mainly,chattering away as they settled for the night – a smooth and cathartic sound that was incredibly relaxing.

It was getting darker every second and instinctively, I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing and allowed myself to be wrapped up by the duvet of sound. My worries and concerns floated away and I started to feel at one with the world. After several minutes I opened my eyes and, feeling relaxed and rejuvenated, continued the walk back to my car, smiling.”

5 thoughts on “There’s something about Blackbirds”

Strangely perhaps, it’s the blackbird alarm call that I find particularly evocative. I think it takes me back to early childhood, which is a very long way, when I explored the garden and loved that late evening dusk when all the bird song seems heightened. That blackbird call though, seems almost uncannily resonant.
We’ve just moved back to the country, and the wildlife, the bird table in particular, is very healing. That call still has the same effect.

Hi Joe,
I feel myself drawn to blackbirds for some reason, there seems something quite magical and spiritual about them. When I lost my black Labrador, I seemed to see them everywhere and I liked to think it was his spirit living on. Silly I know, but it comforted me and still does.